Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History Merge

Some more categories with incomplete histories
I really don't know where would be most appropriate to put this so I am here.

From the deletion log: (no page specified as to where the cats were moved)


 * 00:46, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:US writer stubs (Cat moved)
 * 00:35, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:US train station stubs (Cat moved)
 * 00:34, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:US school stubs (Cat moved)
 * 00:33, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:UK rail stubs (Cat moved)
 * 00:32, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:UK constituency stubs (Moved cat)
 * 00:31, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:UK government stubs (Cat moved)
 * 00:31, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:UK retail company stubs (Moved cat)
 * 00:29, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:UK comics stubs (Moving cat)
 * 00:29, 25 April 2006 Cyde (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:UK school stubs (Cat renamed)

Also:
 * 16:24, 28 April 2006 Alai (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:Western US geography stubs (renamed, per SFD)
 * 15:00, 28 April 2006 Alai (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:Midwestern US geography stubs (renamed, per SFD)
 * 12:47, 28 April 2006 Alai (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:Northeastern US geography stubs (renamed, per SFD)
 * 07:59, 27 April 2006 Mel Etitis (talk | contribs) deleted page Category:Greek-Japaneses (speedy rename)

Additionally, see this from Cyde's contribs log, from which the relevant entries are listed below:
 * 16:59, 27 November 2012 (diff | hist) . . (+832)‎ . . N Category:Public holidays in Russia ‎ (Renamed cat)
 * 22:00, 29 April 2007 (diff | hist) . . (+370)‎ . . N Category:Fair use images of sports posters ‎ (Moved over from Category:Fair use sports posters)
 * 03:49, 3 March 2007 (diff | hist) . . (+130)‎ . . Nm Category:Endemic birds of Western Mexico ‎ (Robot: Moved from Category:Avifauna of Western Mexico. Authors: Circeus, Kbdank71, Chidom, Angusmclellan, BetacommandBot, Mmcannis)
 * 17:06, 2 June 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+383)‎ . . Nm Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Willy on Wheels ‎ (Copy over from old cat name)
 * 14:17, 2 June 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+285)‎ . . Nm Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Interiot` ‎ (Move over category)
 * 19:19, 30 May 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+77)‎ . . N Category:Hotels in Haiti ‎ (Copy over category text)
 * 19:18, 30 May 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+311)‎ . . N Category:American Indian reservations ‎ (Copy over category text)
 * 07:20, 9 May 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+241)‎ . . N Category:Free screenshots ‎ (Copy over from non-plural)
 * 03:03, 30 April 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+26)‎ . . N Category:Transport in Slovenia ‎ (Transport in Slovenia.)
 * 18:54, 28 April 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+181)‎ . . N Category:Columbia University alumni ‎ (Move cat)
 * 18:51, 28 April 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+304)‎ . . N Category:Cornell University alumni ‎ (Move cat)
 * 17:40, 28 April 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+219)‎ . . N Category:California Institute of Technology alumni ‎ (Move cat)
 * 17:40, 28 April 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+134)‎ . . N Category:Bates College alumni ‎ (Move cat)
 * 16:31, 28 April 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+141)‎ . . N Category:Brown University faculty ‎ (Moved cat)
 * 15:03, 28 April 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+252)‎ . . N Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni ‎ (Moved)
 * 23:33, 14 April 2006 (diff | hist) . . (+280)‎ . . N Category:United States railway station stubs ‎ (Moved from Category:US train station stubs)

103.6.159.72 (talk) 09:33, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * 103.6.159.72 (talk) 09:41, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I just finished going over the first group; there was only 1 which I hadn't previously dealt with. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:10, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Second group: Category:Greek-Japaneses was renamed to Category:Greek people in Japan, which was deleted (not renamed). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:18, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The last group was previously unhandled; I've handled it all now - except for, which doesn't appear to be copied from anywhere. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:47, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Special:MergeHistory links for rapid-processing of predictable bot-cut-pastes
I added a MergeHistory column at the right side of WikiProject History Merge/01 with the aid of a PHP script I wrote to make an edit. With that, I was able to fairly quickly do these 257 items in semi-automated fashion. These links may also help to do the human-created cut-pastes, but those are less predictable so do them with more caution. Often, an initial redirect stands in the way of a full histmerge, so before clicking on the link and subsequent buttons, I delete the target page and then restore all but the initial redirect, which a proper move (rather than the cut-paste) would have moved over the top of the redirect and deleted it. Deletion and restoration of pages with long edit histories often times out with an errror message for me, but when that happens I just try again and the deletion or restoration virtually always succeeds on the second try. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:55, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I've written a PHP script that reports the total number of items on the list. As of now, there are 21,666 – a daunting task if this can't be done with at least some semi-automation. And that doesn't include the cut-pastes that have been done in the past year. I also made the script check for history merges that require deletion and restoration of the target, in order to complete hist-merge "move over redirects". Higher priority should be given to these as it's a major pain to delete and restore pages with lengthy edit histories... and after over 15 years we have a lot of those. Delaying the task will only make it even more time-consuming as edit histories continue to grow longer. I will be updating the reports to indicate which items require delete & restore operations before they can be history-merged. 13,772 items are not move-over-redirects so can mostly be done quickly and easily using the Special:MergeHistory links. The other 7894 items require delete & restore before using the Special:MergeHistory links. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:37, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Current numbers (13 done since yesterday):
 * Total oldest revisions: 13765 (generally the easiest to histmerge)
 * Total not the oldest revisions: 7888 (requires delete & restore to move over redirect)
 * No deleted revisions: 7000
 * Has deleted revisions: 888 (care needs to be taken to note previously deleted edits so as not to mistakenly restore them)
 * Total 21653 items

Today I'll update the reports to show these 888 items that need to be done with special care. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:59, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

History merge question
Hi wbm1058. I'm trying to learn the ropes of WP:WikiProject History Merge and wanted to ask a question about the pages, , and Islamic Federation of the Canary Islands. The first two are identical to each other, and are identical to the text that was copy-pasted into the final destination. The text is all by the same author with no intermediate edits. Does a history merge need to occur or can I just remove these entries from the log? — Wug·a·po·des​ 07:45, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I know you weren't asking me, but no history merge needs to occur here. There isn't any useful edit history for these purposes at the titles that are redirects. Best, Dekimasu よ! 08:58, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for asking. This is a common scenario that I've seen many cases of. An editor starts an article by making a single edit, and then minutes later changes the title by starting another article with either an identical or nearly identical edit. That one is listed at WikiProject History Merge/45. Technically Dekimasu is correct, but unfortunately the bot that generated the report isn't quite smart enough to realize that, so I feel that something needs to be done so that this item won't appear on the next version of the report. There are three ways to solve that. (1) You can just merge the single edit anyway; no harm in doing that. (2) If they blanked the first page, and then a redirect edit was subsequently made by the same or another editor, you can delete the first page under G7 – one author who has requested deletion or blanked the page, then restore only the redirect and any edits made after that, or (3) As stated at WikiProject History Merge, if you see an item that cannot be considered a cut-and-paste move, please remove it from the list, and tag the redirect with . This will instruct the bot to disregard this page on future runs. I rarely do that, as I've found the bot to be quite accurate – it doesn't make mistakes that I've seen, other than flagging these annoying edge cases. Also, as the instructions also say, Please note: If you see an item in the report that appears to be a cut-and-paste move, please fix it, even if the source page only had one revision before being turned into a redirect! This will allow AarghBot to find additional related cut-and-paste moves on future runs.


 * What is unusual here is to see two titles where this was done: Islamic Federation of Canarias created at 15:05, and Islamic Federation of Canary Islands created at 15:08. I'm inclined to just merge both, in reverse chronological order, but I don't particularly care what's done to get them permanently off the list, as long as something is done. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:00, 25 January 2020 (UTC)